When you’ve set a goal to make more money or scale your done-for-you biz, it’s natural to look at strategies that will help you get more clients or bring on more team members. However, before you consider adding anything to your business, you need to make sure your foundation is operating at full capacity.
Meaning, you need to make sure you’re not falling prey to these 4 (seemingly small but actually very large) mistakes that will hold back your done-for-you biz. These are 4 things I see keeping VAs, OBMs and SMMs stuck. If you want more balance in your biz, more ease while you scale and more fun in your day-to-day, then be sure you’re not making these 4 mistakes!
1. You don’t track and bill ALL your working time.
Y’all, I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve been on a discovery call with a potential client and they either don’t know how many hours it takes to deliver a service package or they don’t know how many hours they work for each client each month.
Here’s why this is a problem that can massively stunt the growth of your biz.
If you don’t have the data to know how much work you’re producing for each client, then you can’t make smart growth decisions (because you have nothing to base those growth decisions on!).
It can be easy to think “it’s just two minutes here” or “it’s just a slack message there” or “it’s just a quick change to a sales page”. But all that “it’s just” time ADDS UP and frankly? You’re not a charity, sister. You do not work for free.
The truth is… you can’t afford not to start the timer and track ALL of your work if you want to grow your business and make more money.
2. You’re so afraid to lose clients that you never raise your rates.
Are you so afraid to lose your clients that you never raise your rates? Sister, this is a mistake that’s holding you back like WOAH!
You see, you deserve to give yourself a raise just like an employer would give you a raise in the corporate world. That being said there IS a right way and a wrong way to raise your rates (so you can make more money and grow your biz) and I’m going to share them with you today so you can start asking for the money you want without worrying you’ll lose your clients along the way.
In fact, it’s actually pretty simple.
Not giving any advance notice or reasoning around a rate increase is the WRONG way to tell a client your rate is changing. Which means… giving notice and explaining your rate raise IS the right way to do it!
Share when your new rate will go into effect (and make sure it’s a reasonable amount of notice), explain why the increase is happening now AND convey what your client will get for this increase / how long they’re locked into this new rate.
YOU know it’s a huge benefit to your clients to keep you on their team. You also know you’re WAY better at your job than you were 12 months ago. Paying your rate increase becomes a no-brainer for your clients when you explain it in this way.
P.S. Want a little help with this? I have a raise your rates email template in my free resource center. Click here to snag it! I walk you through EXACTLY how to ask for your increase the RIGHT way that gets you more money 💰💰
3. You ignore red flags from potential clients.
Do you ignore red flags from potential clients and bring them onboard ANYWAY? 🤦♀️
One of the biggest issues I help my clients with is handling *their* clients. Because when you’re in a service based industry and have to provide a service to other humans, shit happens. When you put two humans together, it’s natural and NORMAL to have challenges.
That being said you still want to look for red flags that can help you be sure you’re not taking on more challenges than necessary!
💥 Potential Client Red Flags 💥
🚩 Clients wanting you to act like an employee and not a contractor by being available to them more than you desire
🚩 Clients who’ve had multiple done-for-you service providers and never seem to keep people around
🚩 Clients who want turnaround times that you can’t provide without burning yourself out
🚩 Clients who run a super reactive business or never plan in advance (this means you’re always going to be reactive too)
Here’s what you need to know about red flag clients when you’re a VA, OBM or SMM. If you’re ALWAYS hungry for the clients (and so you take on any and every client regardless of fit), then you’ll ALWAYS be stunting your growth.
If what you want is a balanced business built on YOUR terms, then you need to spot these red flags and start saying *no* to clients who don’t fit the bill. Remember, there are so many client fish in the sea!
4. You constantly feel overwhelmed and overworked.
If you’re lucky enough to get a bunch of clients that put you at max capacity, you gotta start saying NO.
It sounds simple, right? But yet it’s suuuuuuper easy for us (especially as women) to keep saying yes well beyond what we can actually do. After all, when we first start out in business our only job is to get someone to pay for our work. We’ll do just about anything to get a client and that’s so normal.
But then we do our work and get lots of referrals (because when you give 200% word travels fast) and we keep saying yes to EVERYONE. We forget that the right clients and the right work at the beginning of our business is different from the right clients and the right work when we’re scaling.
If you keep saying yes and find yourself overworked, you’ll never have the time and space to figure out what needs to change in order for you to scale with ease and balance! When you keep saying yes to the wrong clients and the wrong work, you completely stunt your growth.
Here’s the moral of the story. If your biz isn’t working the way you want it to, your job is to figure out WHY and to get it working better. You need to get OUT of reactive & burnout mode so that you can make good, smart, sound business decisions!
Not only will getting out of burnout mode help you FEEL better on a day-to-day basis, but it will also improve your ability to spot red flags. Plus, it’ll give you more confidence to ask for that raise you want AND the energy to stay focused and consistent so you can track and bill every single second worked.
THAT’S how you bust past the ceiling you’re at and scale with way more ease!
